


Be Mindful When You Come Across Others

by zonophone



Category: Gintama
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Issues, M/M, POV Second Person, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16267991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zonophone/pseuds/zonophone
Summary: It's because you're so constricted by gender, Yagyuu Kyuubei says as you lay on the floor on a pool of your own blood. That's why you cannot win, he tells you. But it was those supermarket doors that hurt you, you tell them, nothing else and certainly not that. Tell yourself the same. Believe it.





	Be Mindful When You Come Across Others

Your sword hesitates when you first encounter Yagyuu Kyuubei at the Smile Snack bar and he cracks it clean through.  
It's because it's really a woman, you tell them.  
Tell yourself the same. Tell yourself you don't believe it but force yourself to, all the same.

It's because you're so constricted by gender, Yagyuu Kyuubei says as you lay on the floor on a pool of your own blood. That's why you cannot win, he tells you. But it was those supermarket doors that hurt you, you tell them, nothing else and certainly not that. Tell yourself the same. Believe it.

“Toshiii, Toshi, when I first saw ya, from the back, ya'd finished beatin' up those punks, I thought ya musta been a beauty, a beautiful woman,” Kondou drawls in a voice thick with too much alcohol and even more rejection from the Shimura girl as you're making your way back from his failed wedding party. “Y'know with yer long hair and yer long, thin neck, ya looked so much like—”

There's a wig placed neatly on a mannequin head in the back room of the hairdresser’s where you get your monthly haircuts. It's long and straight and wouldn't even look out of place on you. Sometimes you stare at it too long. Don't.

You walk away from Kondou and don't hear what else he has to say. Maybe he's told you this before. Ignore it this time too.

 

 

 

After morning roll call you find some of the men gathered around Jump magazines and a radio you end up confiscating on your way to the dojo to train while they're out on patrol.  
“The Vice Commander's a man's man,” you hear one of them say, “he's—”  
“He even looked cool with his long hair,” Yamazaki says. You know he's nodding smugly, because he saw you with long hair and the others never did.  
“He had long hair?”  
“He cut it when the Shinsengumi was formed.”

And if they ask you why you cut it, tell them it's because Sougo stuck gum to it in your sleep. One swing across the air.  
Tell them because it became a liability during battle. Another swing.  
Because you no longer had nowhere to belong. Another.  
Because you were tired of the upkeep. Two more.  
They discontinued your brand of shampoo, Fructis Mayo. Another swing.  
Sougo dyed it orange. More.  
Matsudaira ordered you to. More.  
Donated it to charity. Go again, and again.  
Sougo burnt it. Swing.  
Lost a bet.

Don't think about how you've come to hate your body while you're training.  
Don't think about your body other than the strain of the exercise.  
Don't think about your body when you go to bed at night and keep your hands neatly away from it so you won't have to think about it when you accidentally brush them against it.  
Don't use any names for any parts of your body so you won't have to think about how you've come to hate it.

If memories of her come to you, ignore them.  
Ignore the way you watched her put on her make up out of the corner of your eyes and tried memorizing the skillful movement of her hand and the brush and her fingers as crickets chirped outside. Ignore the way her smile when she turned to watch you watching her made you feel like she'd seen right through you and wasn't judging. Ignore it all the way you ignored her when she offered to teach you, when she asked Do you want to try? and for all answer you walked away. The way you ignored her confession and left her for Edo and never again crossed words with her even though you suspected maybe she'd seen through you. Maybe she wouldn't have judged.

 

 

 

Don't think about how you've come to hate your body late at night at the old man's shop—his wife's shop now that he's gone, you suppose—when he comes and sits next to you and his breath reeks of alcohol and his words are slurred and slowed down and you don't flinch away when he leans in closer and closer, your shoulders grazing against each other, making you all the more aware of the body you're not thinking about how you've come to hate. Find it uncomfortable. If you can't, find it in yourself to. Even if after you've given into it for a couple minutes. Just a couple more. Just a few.

Watch his hand softly pose itself on your knee, on your thigh, under the counter. Find it uncomfortable but say nothing. Not yet. Watch him watch you from below his half lidded, dead fish eyes and stop yourself from smiling. You smiled when he told you on that rooftop he was the Shiroyasha. Don't think about how you smiled back then.  
“You're so beautiful,” he says almost to himself.  
Flinch now.  
“You shouldn't say that to a man,” tell him. Use the best—the worst—tone you can muster.  
Watch him scoff, Ha!, mostly to himself again as he leans his weight on his hand, on your knee and thigh, to scramble to his feet. Don't say anything, look away, at the wall. Feel the pressure of his hand leave but not the emptiness that's sure to come. Don't think about how you've come to hate your body. Don't.  
Watch the Yorozuya walk out of the shop scratching his armpit as he moves the noren out of his way and don't call out to him. Don't think about calling out to him. Don't follow.

Don't spend all night thinking about what that Ha! might have meant, about the way he looks at you as if he could see right through you, the way he's looked at you like that since that first day on the rooftop when you slashed through his shoulder and he didn't even unsheathe the sword and he still won and yet it was you who felt like you'd gained something. You feel you gain something every time. Try not to feel that way. Try not to think of him. See if you can.

 

 

 

 

It's been a while so maybe you can get a fill. Only for a little while.

Your hand draws color on your mouth in the mirror of this stakeout apartment in the outskirts no one's using at the moment. It's the same movements you used to watch her do, the only time really that you've watched those movements performed, committed to your memory like a treasure. Your eyelashes are drawn out long and thick and black with every blink onto the brush and you feel the bubble of elation growing at the pit of your stomach. This isn't what makes you a woman, just as all the pretension and all the orders you give yourself throughout the day to keep them from guessing don’t make you a man, but it feels so much closer to how you wish it were. Like this you can almost forget about how you've come to hate your body. You watch your form in the mirror fitted into a kimono you found packed among your stuff when you finally arrived to Edo—back then it was new and soft and though you've barely worn it four, five times, it smells of its hiding place, where you keep it under wraps, where the sun never hits it and the air never brushes its surface. It still smells better than your uniform and your blue yukata and fits better than either of them when you watch yourself in the mirror.

Don't think about how exciting and thrilling and liberating it was to buy your fukuro obi at that store during one of the few, maybe the only, recruitment trips you took outside Edo. Don't think about how hard it was to contain your excitement and the way the woman at the store watched you guardedly up until you paid and left and you almost didn't care about her prying looks because you'd finally found the perfect one.

And most importantly don't venture outside despite temptation. You never know who might be out there.

 

 

 

 

You wake up refreshed and renewed and stop by the hairdresser’s on your way back to the barracks. It's your day off so you might as well make the most of it, you'll end up running into him anyway. You want to show him what good hair really looks like.

“Really like that wig, huh?”  
“Hah?”  
“You're always looking at it. Remind you of someone?”  
You weren't supposed to stare, you idiot.  
“Hn, it's—”  
“Take it. It's of no use here.”  
“This a bribe? That's a crime, y'know?” tell him as you blow smoke out of your nostrils since it makes you look really cool and menacing.  
“Haaah? Course not, I'm just being friendly! We don't need it so you can take it,” the barber says as he stuffs the damn thing into a bag, as if you'd actually already accepted it, then shoves it into your hands.

You find yourself dragging your feet through the ground, under one arm the bag where your kimono is wrapped in thousands of layers, hidden away; under the other the bag with the wig you were forced to take, and that's what's on your mind when you bump head first into his chest. Just your luck.

“Oi, cop, couldja watch yer step. Yer s'posed ta defend citizens not assault them.”  
“Go away.”  
“Oi, what's withja? Ya don't look so good. Wanna get a drink? I just won at Pachinko, first one's on me, then ya can pay me back with a couple rounds, yeah?”  
“It's not even noon.”  
“S'fine, s'fine, woke up at the Pachinko parlor with no hangover, m'good to go. S'really my lucky day, ya know? Come, come.”

 

Try putting up at least a little bit of resistance when he wraps his arm around you and guides you through back alleys towards the old man's shop where granny's waiting for both of you, starts your specials up before you're even seated. Try putting up at least a little bit of resistance when he sits so close to you your shoulders are once again pressed against each other and he's practically holding your weight. Have some dignity. Don't stare at the bags so much or he'll get curious, he's like a fucking cat, he'll open the bags and then it'll be out of it. The cat will be out of the bag, in a manner of speaking.

“Whassat?” he says, mouth full of half chewed rice and red bean washed down with beer.  
“Nothin',” say calmly, without hesitation. “Presents.”  
“F'me?”  
Look away from the way he's smiling at you, smug and cunning and definitely up to no good.  
“Why'd I get you presents?”  
“Cause ya love me?”  
Don't shiver when he whispers in your ear in his low voice. Don't even think about it having happened. Don't yelp or sigh or shiver or even acknowledge that it happened.  
“N-not fer ya,” say but try not to say it in such a shaky voice or he'll think you're somehow affected by the fact that he whispered in your ear and he's so close, his hand on your shoulder, his hair brushing against your cheeks.  
“A ha,” he tells you, not a whisper this time but still close to your ear. Don't shiver.  
He returns to his previous position, stuffing his face with his disgusting bowl of food and beer, though he leaves his left hand on your shoulder, and plays with the short hairs on your nape. You shouldn't let him but if you acknowledge it then maybe it'll be worse? Maybe he won't be able to tell you like it and you're feeling so refreshed and so not on edge maybe you can indulge. It's just him.

“Ya cut it.”  
You nod.  
“Will ya ever grow it out again?”  
You watch him, eyes wide. How does—  
“How'd ya know?”  
“Let's say Tetsu had some pictures.”  
“That moron idiot, I'm gonna—”  
“Will ya?”  
Shake your head and feel his rough fingers graze against the skin of your nape. Feel his fingers pose themselves there for what's left of both your meals and drinks. Try thinking about shrugging it off and losing that battle against your own self. It's a concession.

 

Look him in the eye only a couple more seconds, only that, before you get up to pay and he takes his hand away from the back of your neck and you feel the absence of his touch and his warmth and almost regret it.

“Going back to the barracks,” you tell him once outside, as he's holding the shop's noren above his head, halfway through the threshold.  
“See ya around, Hijikata,” he says, his hand deep inside the folds of his clothes, dead fish eyes shining like they do in close ups.

Barely half of your day off has passed but the prospect of facing your naked body at the baths fills you with dread, especially when you know chances are the Yorozuya'll be there too, and carrying the two bags around is enough to tie the bubbles of elation that formed last night into knots that drag you deeper and deeper into the places you go to when you remember how little you deserve.

 

 

 

  
It hasn't been that long, six months maybe, since the last time, but now you have a wig that'll suit you, that'll look the way your hair used to look, when Kondou mistook you. When she mistook you too. When she called you onee-chan and then giggled at her confusion and didn't apologize the way others did. That way which made it seem as if they'd done something terrible and you were about to murder them, deciding your feelings about it for you, how offended you should've been, cause that was what was normal, to be offended. She didn't apologize at all.

Climb the stairs up to the apartment one by one, no need to rush. You have all night.  
You draw your features in the mirror with an expert hand that has regardless not done this more than a few times but has practiced in theory endlessly.  
You fit your body that you try your best not to think about into the soft fabric of the kimono and tie your obi in the tateya musubi style that you've mastered all on your own because you're always alone when you're closer to who you sometimes let yourself dream you are. You're always alone when you're closer to being true to yourself.

The wig isn't perfect. At first it hardly holds a candle to the way your hair used to look, but it takes some arranging, and if you'd known you'd have brought a brush but now you know better. It ends up looking not bad. If the bubbles rising to the surface from the pit of your stomach, shining like sunrays against clear water, and popping into sparkles, are any indication, maybe you're comfortable. You barely feel the dragging weight of your body—shoulders and torso and waist and legs—which reminds you how much you've come to hate it. Instead you feel the lightness of the kimono and the obi and the long hair on your shoulders and the person looking back at you in the mirror is so much closer to what you sometimes dream of, even when you don't want to, it kind of feels like crying. You've got no orders to give yourself at this time so you indulge.

You could go outside, like this.  
You don't have to do anything you don't want to.  
You don't have to order yourself.

Just for tonight.

 

 

You're not used to walking so much while wearing this but your steps are short and light and you're not even ordering yourself to pretend or uphold or do anything you don't want to, anything others expect of you.

No one watches you or gives you more than a passing glance. There are other women walking around the area at this time, and some of them giggle, exchange the kind of knowing smile women give each other when no man is watching them, aim it at you and you are able to give it back, slowly, unsurely, but there somehow. You feel as if you've gained something again. You rarely feel like that if he's not around, which makes this all the more special.

 

 

  
And when you're back in the barracks and getting ready for sleep, the kimono and the obi and the wig all safely put away and hidden from view, you let yourself think maybe one day you'll tell him. Maybe one day he'll see right through you and he'll understand and he won't judge and he won't apologize. And when you fall asleep you let yourself imagine his rough fingers running through your hair, touching your skin, and not pushing him away when he makes you aware of your body because maybe one day, when he sees right through you, you finally won't be alone when you're closer to being yourself.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont feel as if ive written rly what i wanted to write abt the topic or acheived what i was lookin for but i know i rly could not actually do what i want to do w it ig bc its so personal yet nebulous n abstract


End file.
